Why is it important to name coronavirus correctly?

February 23, 2020 / BIOON / -- don't call this new coronavirus outbreak "Wuhan coronavirus", but start to adapt to "covid-19" This is the World Health Organization's recommended name for the disease While it may seem intuitive to identify a new disease based on its origin, history has shown that doing so could harm people living there The consequences could include economic hardship as tourists leave, investment cools and solidarity between people weakens Linking a particular disease to a particular place can lead to discrimination, stigmatization and avoidance of a town or village As a historian of public health and modern Africa, Mari webel studies the politics of infectious diseases, as well as the importance of understanding their cultural background and response to them Past epidemics have highlighted the impact on society and public health of the way people talk about the origin of disease Photo source: NIAID Flickr, CC by's long tradition of naming by location has a long history of using a place name tag to identify a disease In the 19th century, with the global trade and population flow, cholera began to spread from the Ganges delta to the whole world This disease was soon known as "Asian Cholera" The label has been around for decades, implicitly blaming the entire Asian continent for a disease that can spread anywhere because of poor sanitation For Europeans and Americans at that time, Asia was a distant country full of exotic customs The definition of cholera as "Asian" is in line with the view of racism and imperialism, which discredits the wisdom and culture of the global non white population and defends the colonial rule It also helps justify stricter segregation and travel restrictions, as these people are seen as "Asians" rather than Europeans For example, Muslim pilgrims on their way from South Asia to Mecca are subject to different rules than European military ships on the same route In the late 19th century, scientists could use new laboratory techniques to link specific pathogens - bacteria, parasites, and later viruses - to specific diseases This gives an ancient problem a scientific name, such as "tuberculosis" to become the medical name of tuberculosis But these new technologies also allow researchers to link pathogens to specific areas Naming a disease after a place quickly became the norm As a result, Rift Valley fever, caused by a virus of the Bunyaviridae family, is named after the Kenyan colony where it was first reported Hantavirus is associated with the Hantan River region of South Korea, where Dr Ho Wang Lee first discovered the virus The name of the Ebola virus (EVD) comes from a river near a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), where scientists in the United States and Europe have found the pathogen Focusing on a specific place can create something special from what happens anywhere Compared with other villages 5 or 50 miles away, the village of Lasha in Nigeria is nothing special The village of Lasha is only the place where the death of the first white missionary caught the attention of the authorities However, after that moment, as the "Lassa fever" became a terrible hemorrhagic fever, the town of Lassa became a shadow of its past Paying attention to the wrong things in the short term, the close relationship between the place and the disease may bring shame to patients, and also affect people's risk perception of people near and far away According to reports, a serious and fatal respiratory and haemorrhagic disease broke out in the United States In 1993, the four corners area was called "Navajo flu" by the media People in the region mistakenly believe that the disease is directly contagious and highly confined to the Navajo people Linking this shocking new disease to the Navajo nation will shudder those who report it to the medical authorities for fear of stigma Finally, officials named the new hantavirus that caused the outbreak "sin nombre," which means "no name" in Spanish It is very important for biologists and epidemiologists to understand the ecology of disease and the mode of disease transmission at the source But to name a disease permanently in a specific place is to draw public attention to the moment of the outbreak Focus on how an "emerging" disease initially infects people, at the expense of clear messages about who is at risk of infection or how to prevent the disease in the event of continued epidemics What's more, for the general public who want to keep healthy or the public health practitioners who try to control the epidemic between people, the time of outbreak is often not very relevant Shaping blame as a name, linking the location of the disease to a specific person, will also draw attention to how the broader public can relate a group's culture, diet or activities to the disease For example, during the Ebola virus (EBV) epidemic in 2014-2015, this stereotype was created, mistakenly blaming some for a broader problem Early discussions on EVD focused on eating "jungle meat," a colonial term used to describe meat that people hunted rather than bought on the market When it comes to "jungle meat", people can describe EVD patients as primitive or alien It also suggests that people should be responsible for the spread of the disease because of their diet or lifestyle In fact, the widespread spread of EVD in 2014-2015 was linked to underfunded health systems in affected countries, not to people's diets Photo source: CDC via AP, file now, a similar process is on stage It is said that the "vegetable market" in Wuhan is the main cause of the spread of zoonotic infectious diseases, that is, the virus is transmitted from animals to humans Scientists don't know how much the live animal market in Wuhan has to do with the global epidemic, although they know that viruses often jump from animals to humans For the wide spread of covid-19, Wuhan's historical position as a national high-speed rail and commercial center may be far more important than where people are, how to shop and eat Customary covid-19 public health officials and scientists have begun to understand the potentially harmful effects of linking sites and disease names, including the direct response to public health and the long-term economic and social future impact on a place In 2015, who published official guidelines to avoid this practice The novel coronavirus has been the headline and spread around the world in the past few weeks, and there has been a heated debate about how to call it The public's understanding of risk and prevention, as well as the global solidarity with the people in the severely affected areas of Wuhan, is used to saying "covid-19" and insisting that others do the same After all, Spain has nothing special to do with the so-called "Spanish influenza" (the devastating H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1918-1919) They just reported the flu first Reference materials: [1] naming the new coronavirus: why taking Wuhan out of the picture matters [2] scientists need to rethink how human disease names chosen, who advice: new best practice [3] who director general's remarks at the media briefing on 2019 ncov on 11 February 2020 [4] Karl M Johnson The discovery of Hantaan Virus： Comparative Biology and Serendipity in a World at War he Journal of Infectious Diseases， Volume 190， Issue 9， 1 November 2004， Pages 1708-1710， https：//doi.org/10.1086/424604 【5】 Death at the Corners 【6】 International Political Economy and the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak 【7】 In virus outbreak， fretting over a name that might go viral 【8】 World Health Organization Best Practices  for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases  May 2015 【9】 WHO names deadly virus from China as 'COVID-19'